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"Let books be your dining table, / And you shall be full of delights. / Let them be yourmattress,/And you shall sleep restful nights" (St. Ephraim the Syrian).

Monday, September 29, 2014

Married Eastern Catholic Priests

I am working like a madman to get my third book done and submitted to the publisher by October. I'm not being immodest when I say that it will be the single-best collection ever published on the topic of married Catholic priests. There is nothing else out there remotely close to what will be in this book. That is a simple statement of facts. The book reprints two very important essays from several decades ago, including one that was privately circulated in Canada; but even more important, it includes previously unpublished historical research on early canons and debates about clerical continence; it includes ecclesiological and ecumenical reflections from Catholics and Orthodox; and it will include singular pastoral and theological reflections from married priests as well as an outstanding essay by one presbytera reflecting on the vocation of being married to a priest. I have to say I'm especially pleased with how the essays cohere together. Often collections are very uneven, but many of these essays, even without intending it, build off one another and mesh together in a felicitous fashion.

We're still kicking around titles, though I'm leaning towards something like A Primer on Married Catholic Priests though it will probably end up with something more academic and solemn: Married Eastern Catholic Priests: Historical, Ecclesiological, and Theological Reflections. We'll see. Suggested titles would be welcome in the comments below.

The contents:

I) Introduction: Adam DeVille

II) Historical Reflections:

i) David Hunter (University of Kentucky), "Priesthood and Sexual Continence: the Origins of a Western Tradition."

ii) J.K. Coyle (†) (deceased professor of patristics and history at Saint Paul University, Ottawa), "Recent Views on the Origins of Clerical Celibacy: A Review of the Literature from 1980-1991."

iii) Patrick Viscuso (professor of canon law at the Antiochian House of Studies and past president of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America), "Later Byzantine Developments in Priesthood."

iv) Adam DeVille (associate professor and chairman of the Dept. of Theology-Philosophy, University of Saint Francis), "A Married Priesthood is no Panacea."

v) David Meinzen (bi-ritual Ukrainian Catholic priest and RC university chaplain, formerly of the OCA), "Reflections from the Field: A Married Priest and His Family on Vocations and Pastoral Challenges."IV: Theological Reflections:

i) Lawrence Cross (Eastern Catholic archpriest at the Australian Catholic University), "Married Clergy: at the Heart of Tradition."

ii) Basilio Petrà (Roman Catholic priest and ordinary professor of moral theology at the University of Central Italy), "Married Priesthood: Some Theological Resonances."

iv) Irene Galadza (retired Catholic teacher and vice-principal, catechist, and presbytera at St. Elias Parish, Brampton, Ontario), "The Vocation of the Presbytera: Icon of the Theotokos in the Midst of the Ministerial Priesthood."Conclusion: Adam DeVille

Here is a radical title: Images of Christ and his Bride the Church: Essays on the Married Priesthood." Now, in Latin think, the celibate Christ symbolize Christ and he, like the Bishop is wedded to his bride, the Church, who came forth from Christ's side when it was opened by the lance, as a second eve. However, Eastern thinking allows for the priest wife to be seen as a symbol of the church, and further, their (the priest and his wife) children symbolize the fruitfulness of mother Church with her children. Or another way priest = Christ, priests wife - Christ's bride the church.

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About Me

I am the editor of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies; author of Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy; a tenured associate professor and chairman of the Dept. of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana; and a subdeacon of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church (UGCC) resident in the Eparchy of St. Nicholas of Chicago.